Photo to come Those of us behind the camera don’t much like being photographed – other people rarely build the frame we get paid for. Until then, a self-portrait a few years old: ben-kunstleben.com – framing meaningful stories.
In short
So the person in front of it can be themselves.
Everything else on this page only answers why that holds – not where I come from. So: the rooms I have stood in, what I do when things get difficult, and how I get from the boardroom to the workshop in four hours.
01Rooms
Where I have worked – and who was sitting there. A selection. From the boardroom to the workshop, from a minister’s visit to a music session.
- DirectionFor agencies based abroad
- CameraAgency bookings, among them THE LÄND. Concert recordings
- SoundProduction sound as its own department, multitrack for panels and discussions, post also for other people’s material
- VideographerConcept, camera and post on my own – including two films for the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district
- With CEOsSecond photographer, lighting and concept work for the shoots of a large German testing and certification group, over several years
- PoliticsDocumenting the visit of the state minister for economic affairs. Portrait sessions with two district administrators
- Long-form documentaryPercussion Masters, in English: with Isao Nakamura, Steven Schick, David Friedman, Emmanuel Séjourné and others – lessons live on tape, conversations, walks, music recordings. Podcast since 2022
- Teaching formatsInstructional videos for frame drums, devised and produced
These sets have one thing in common: the person in front of the camera gets room and a frame. In the end it is always about reduction – of stress, nerves, wanting-too-much, distraction. What remains is a clear picture.
02When it gets difficult
When something disrupts
Almost every shoot has a moment where calm and clarity are needed most. I learned that in emergency medicine as well: after a serious crash, a passenger started blaming himself and everyone else. I told him that now was not the time for it – that he should sit down, that my colleagues were doing their best, and that we were there for him.
Not thrown out, but looked after. That is the move: whoever disrupts gets a task or attention, not a reprimand. On set nobody notices that something was just handled – and your client never sees a scene.
Clarity is care, not hardness. Friendly and vague makes it worse for everyone.
And when something isn’t working
Then I say so early. Not in the evening, when nothing can be changed any more. It is the same move as above, only with fewer blue lights – and it is the part that saves you money.
I don’t get loud about it and I don’t get sour. I only get loud when there is danger in the room.
03Boardroom to workshop
Same instrument, different register
An interview with the management and one with the workshop
are two
different crafts.
Even when the camera stands in exactly the same place. On a single shoot day I talk to the head of communications, forty minutes later to the workshop manager, and then to the caretaker who has the key and has no interest in either of them.
Three registers, three sets of priorities – and the day only works if all three feel taken seriously. I didn’t learn that on set, but behind a bar and studying social work.
04Where this comes from
Briefly, in order
- Camera, since fiveGrew up around theatre. At five I could operate the Panasonic F10 – not a career change, picture and sound were always there
- Emergency medicineMeeting people as equals, glossing over nothing, explaining everything
- Bar workReading people across every walk of life
- Social work, BAInstitutions, power imbalances, advocacy
- Festival, nine yearsInternational artists, riders, schedules – and a deliberate full stop
- Freelance, since 2018Direction, camera, sound, photography, fixer – and brand work as Storyfacturing®
Alongside that, Percussion Masters, together with my wife, the percussionist Francesca Santangelo: an archive documenting what would otherwise be lost. The reason I take interviews so seriously – I have been conducting them for years with people who pay me nothing.
You need someone who reads the room.
That’s why I’m
here.
Rich in experience. Curious as ever.
Get in touch